The Four Temperaments Read Online Free PDF Page A

baffled about what to do, until finally the minister himself had appeared, with his dark pants and brilliantly shined shoes, to lift her from the floor and deliver her, sobbing, into her mother's arms. Later she was sorry she'd made such a scene and embarrassed her mother; she didn't even like June Bell all that much.
    In Oscar's
apartment, Ginny sat up and pushed the hair away from her face. Sweet Jesus, it was hot! She wriggled her toes and looked down to see that they were bare. Being the gentleman that he was, Oscar had removed her shoes but nothing else and she was sweating. “Don't say ‘sweat,' Virginia,” her mother would have scolded, “a lady never sweats, she just glows.” But she was not and would never be a lady. Too bad for Mama; she tried so hard.
    Stripping down was the logical thing to do, so she did it. Then she went looking for a bathroom. When she found it, she turned on the shower. Just as Ginny was about to step inside, under the spray of warm water, she knew that the contents of her stomach were about to come up and she leaned over the toilet bowl to vomit. Actually, it did not feel at all bad: the dark night, the cool, reassuring feel of her bare feet against the tile, and the lemony smell that wafted up from the bowl—Oscar's wife certainly kept things spick-and-span—all made it seem that Mia had been no more than a bad meal she had eaten.
    She stepped under the shower and stayed there a long time, rinsing her mouth with streams of water and lathering herself with the bar of scented soap—magnolia! home!—from a ceramic dish. Thoughts of Mia were like the bubbles that slid from her chest to her waist to her legs, and then rushed effortlessly down the drain. This was only one part, and a small one too. Her turn would come soon. She knew it. In the meantime, she would have to work harder, and she would have to be patient. Maybe apologizing to Mia wouldn't be a bad idea either, though she wasn't sure how Mia would take it. Maybe Oscar could help with that. Oscar. Where was he now, anyway?
    When Ginny got out of the shower, she wrapped herself up in one of Ruth's—she remembered her name now—big, fresh-smelling, pale blue towels. She felt better than she had in days. She was fully intending to walk back to the room where she had come from and get some sleep. But it was easy to get confused in the dark, what with the strange apartment and all, and she found herself walking right by the room where Oscar was sleeping. The door was wide open and his belly was moving up and down in the most peaceful way, and because of the light from the streetlights outside (another thing Ginny hated about New York was how it was never really, truly dark, which she knew must have accounted for a lot of the weird behavior of the people there), she could see his face, looking all screwed up and tense, as if he were trying to figure something out in his sleep. It was that look that drew her into the room. Oscar had been so good to her, and now that she was feeling good herself, she didn't want him to feel bad. She only meant to put her hand on his forehead, just to smooth the frown away, and she did. But then he opened his eyes and somehow the towel was on the floor and she was saying his name. His arms wound around her and pulled her gently down, toward the bed.
    Afterward, Ginny realized that he talked to her as if she had been a virgin, the big, sweet fool. He should only have known. She had been having sex since she was fifteen, and she didn't think of it as a big deal. At least if she was careful not to get pregnant, the way her mother had. Mama hadn't been careful and she hadn't been smart, but Ginny was determined to be both. By the time she was fourteen, she had already been to a clinic downtown and after lying about her age—Lord knows that was easy enough—got herself a prescription for birth control pills and enough condoms for the next decade. There was a whole